Regenerative Business Ethics

Being a restorative business means, before all, being relational.
Our integrity requires us to examine the modern landscaping industry for opportunities to restore the nourishment and accountability of healthy relationship.

RELATIONSHIP #1: BETWEEN THE LANDSCAPER AND THE LAND

• Original relationship: Mother Earth nourishes us as we grow up, giving us food, shelter, beauty, and companionship. As we step into our adult roles, we desire to give back. We become stewards of the land, listening to it with attunement, working with it in partnership.
  
  
• Modern relationship: We replace landscapes with egoic human preferences, evaluating the changes only according to our own goals and understandings. We’re more focused on making money and avoiding liability than on learning from the environment and serving the whole. The work may help us feel more connected to humans, but we are cut off from our places in the natural world. Through the exploitation of our natural resources and the mass conversion of land to “human-only” uses, we’re destroying our own natural environment, on a fast track to extinction of most life on Earth.
  
  
• Restorative relationship: We can listen with attunement and curiosity, not only so that we don’t do harm, but so that we can find the right and juicy ways of connecting with the land and shaping it. We can study indigenous land management practices, and come together through groups like the Regenerative Education Collective or the Local Plant Fellowship, to help each other practice listening to the land and learning about our native plants. We can see the clear-cut forest or the weedy yard as nature that has been battered, but that still has the seeds of abundance within it. We can learn to listen to nature with our intuitive and attentive senses, to flirt with flowers, to pay attention to non-human relationships within the ecosystem and to the impact of our actions on the land. We can look for bridges, places where local human needs and local nonhuman needs can collaborate to create new and beautiful gardens.
  
  

RELATIONSHIP #2: BETWEEN THE LANDSCAPER AND THE LABORER

• Original relationship: You help me build a fence. I look for ways to give back. If someone pays me to build a fence and I want your help, I share the payment with you. I care about you, so I don’t push your body in unhealthy ways or otherwise exploit you. I make sure you’re learning the trade so that you can be more and more independent over time. If you work for me for a long time and then grow old or disabled, I take care of you and invite you to participate in ways that feel good to both of us.
  
  
• Modern relationship: The landscaper hires immigrants or young workers and pays them as little as possible, working their bodies until they break. The boss doesn’t ask his workers what they need or want, and doesn’t try to cultivate healthy community except in a manipulative way. The workers don’t have their own tools and aren’t learning the higher aspects of the craft or business; they are stuck. When the laborer grows old or disabled, they are abandoned. The landscaper dies rich, alone, and ashamed.
  
  
• Restorative relationship: We commit to fair pay and living wages for everyone, as well as to ongoing good-faith negotiations about our needs. We stay open to receiving feedback on our impacts on each other. We create labor models and boundaries that don’t exploit the human body, like sharing the load via the “DIY with Help” program, and making sure there’s time for rest, play, and connection in our work schedule. We design the apprenticeship program to empower workers with tools, knowledge, and freedom. We consider how to work toward more financial equity over time, via co-op models, apprenticeship, and promoting from within. The landscaper dies, hopefully, feeling like they gave as much as they took, and built rewarding relationships along the way.
  
  

RELATIONSHIP #3: BETWEEN THE CLIENTS AND THE LAND

• Original relationship: You walk outside your house and see the beauty of nature all around you, although it’s been tamed around your community. Birds swoop overhead toward a nearby tree; you know that the birds eat the fruit, just like you have been doing since you were a kid. Since the tree is so generous to both you and the birds, you’ve been saving its seeds to plant it behind your house, where it can grow to shade and cool your home.
  
  
• Modern relationship: You walk outside your house and see a generic template of a city or suburb. It doesn’t look or feel anything like the nearby wild areas where you go to hike and watch the birds. You remember a childhood of berry-picking and catching bugs, but there are no berries or bugs in your backyard. You look at your lawn and may feel disconnected, unsatisfied, or ashamed. The water from your rooftop and your sprinklers runs down your driveway, into the gutters, and then to large containment basins where it evaporates.
  
  
• Restorative relationship: You learn about what was growing in your yard before colonization, and get excited about bringing back humming habitat. You add plants that feed local insects and wildlife as well as feeding or supporting your household. You delight in the pollinators and birds that come to live along the new plants , and take satisfaction in your role as a purveyor of natural drama. Your nourish your heart by planting your mother’s favorite flower, and nurture your family by designing a yard that supports and uplifts everyone. You pay attention to your garden and learn to hear its voices and appreciate its rhythms. The water from your rooftop flows into swales and basins that passively water – not only the native plants that don’t really need it – but also fruit trees or other plants that make the land greener and more abundant.
  
  

RELATIONSHIP #4: BETWEEN THE CLIENTS AND THE LANDSCAPER

• Original relationship: Your neighbor, who knows all about plants, helps you plant a beautiful garden around your home. She teaches you about the uses of the plants, about where they grow and who feeds from them, about their songs and seasons. You work side-by-side with your hands in the dirt, and make jokes all day. Receiving her gift feels good, because you’re always helping each other out.
  
  
• Modern Relationship:
  If you can afford it, you pay a landscaper to build you a garden. They come up with an idea and pitch it to you along with a price tag, without really studying the land or talking you through your options. You don’t know anything about the plants they chose. You don’t really know what you’re paying for, and you’re wary of getting ripped off. They do all the work for you; you never touch the dirt. You never see the landscaper again.
  If you can’t afford to hire a landscaper, you struggle to plant a large area in an affordable way, and to navigate the sea of online advice that’s not specific to your area. There is no relationship between you and the landscaper.
  
• Restorative relationship: We work to educate our clients about the land they live on, to help them feel more connected to it, and to act as liaisons between the needs of the land and the needs of the client. We involve the clients in the design process as partners. We offer quotes with full transparency about how the client’s money is being used and what their options are. We encourage clients to be involved in the planting process via our “DIY with Help” program, so that installs feel more like village barn-raisings than like disconnected transactions. We pay attention to relational health with our clients – to navigating confusion and boundaries in respectful ways, and to structuring our practices toward what works best for everyone. And we create tiers of help for people with different capacities, like our detailed DIY Guide and our “Garden In A Truck.”